The Stone Blog

It seems like we say this every twelve months (probably because we do), but this has been a huge year for us at Stone. Perhaps the biggest yet. Things never slow down here, and that’s the way we like it. Truth be told, we wouldn’t know what to do with ourselves if we had a spare moment! So a heartfelt thank you goes out to each and every one of our fans for ensuring we maintain the breakneck pace we’ve become so accustomed to.

Despite our infatuation with constant rapid progress, we feel compelled to take a moment, be it ever so brief, to reflect on the year gone by. A lot happened in our brewhouse, at our restaurant, in our community and beyond. This was a very good year, one that should be fully remembered for years to come. In that spirit, we submit to you, our valued fans, a retrospective of 2012 at Stone.

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If you’ve ever been to one of our Anniversary Celebrations, you’re awesome. You’ve been part of something special. Part of something larger than we could have ever envisioned. Something larger than we ever could have created without you. The Stone 16th Anniversary Celebration & Invitational Beer Festival is SoCal’s biggest beer festival, with over 100 beers to choose from! It’s taking place on August 17th and 18th at nearby California State University, San Marcos. Our Rare Beer section is sold out, but we’ve still got tickets left (for now, anyway) for Friday night’s Brewers Reception and the main event on Saturday!

Over the past 15 years, we’ve raised MORE THAN $1.5 MILLION for local charities through these neat little get-togethers with a few thousand of our closest friends, including an astronomical $240,000 at last year’s festival alone! Given that we’re Stone, we always want to go bigger and better, which is why we know that this year’s will be the greatest ever! (’til next year at least…)

Admit it. You want to go to there.

The main event is taking place on Saturday, with two sessions, Session A from 11am-2pm, and Session B from 3pm-6pm. Your golden ticket includes:

• One (1) snazzy commemorative Stone 16th Anniversary tasting glass
• Ten 4-oz. samples (BTW, you get to choose from over 150 amazing beers made by the 50 craft breweries in attendance. BOOM!)
• Free homebrewed sodas, provided by the Society Of Barley Engineers
• Aaaaannnd samples of über-delicious Mike’s Beer Cheese!

Delectable food will be available for purchase from some of our favorite local restaurants/vendors and our very own Stone Catering. Never to be missed, we’ll also have the (in)famous Arrogant Bastard Ale onion rings. (This is the only event each year where we offer them; the only other way you get get em is if you make them yourself!)

We’re doing it all up bigger and better: pouring the very first drops of the brand new, super-secret-super-fresh Stone Enjoy By IPA, adding live music and more space, including a nifty new area we’re calling Steve’s Cigar Lounge. (Stone prez/co-founder Steve Wagner + cigars + kickback area = Steve’s Cigar Lounge.) We’ll of course have plenty of Stone 16th Anniversary IPA on hand as well!

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